


We're becoming one of "those couples"

by orphan_account



Series: unrelated tumblr shorts [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, mycroft gets dumped in a bakery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 16:28:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14898014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: prompt: “I think you’re just afraid to be happy”





	We're becoming one of "those couples"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oswin42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oswin42/gifts).



On Thursday, they break up in a French pastry shop.  
  
Or, rather, Mycroft Holmes gets dumped in a French pastry shop, by the madeleines.  
  
“I think we should stop seeing each other,” Jim says, slow and thoughtful not because he’s given the statement due consideration but because he’s bending over to scrutinize the display case of fanciful French macarons, trying to make up his mind.  
  
Mycroft just rolls his eyes from his spot at the end of the counter.   
  
“You couldn’t have told me this over the phone?”   
  
Jim orders two dragonfruit macarons and a box of chocolate praline ones before turning back to Mycroft.  
  
“I’m told that’s bad form.  _Actually_ ,” Jim says, rolling the word around in his mouth, “it was probably you who told me that.”  
  
Might have been. It’s the eighth time they’ve broken up. Mycroft doesn’t quite care; he has a tedious meeting in an hour and plans to distract himself by catching up on the recent troubles in the oil market and decidedly not sweets. He gives Jim a dirty look as Jim offers him one of the black-and-white speckled cookies and ignores it to make his way out of the shop.  
  
.  
  
Now it’s Saturday and they’re sitting in a dimly lit, very new, very obscure oyster bar, and Jim is suggesting they get back together.  
  
They use these terms very lightly, because upon examining the course of events, one could hardly accuse the two of  _dating_. 

Mycroft looks around and wonders if Jim means for them to actually order. Jim is allergic to shellfish, serious enough to hazard a horrendous rash and limit his breathing, but not so serious to render anaphylactic shock. Perhaps this, like the pastry shop, is his form of a sick apology. 

–

They first meet in a local jail, where Jim has gotten himself arrested under an alias for the entirely inconsequential crime of shoplifting (a pair of headphones, which he no doubt could afford). Jim manipulates the system to set his bail at an exorbitantly high amount for such a petty crime (upwards of a million) and it catches the eye of one of Mycroft’s assistants’ assistants, who had been tasked to keep an eye out on local crime in tandem with the Prime Ministers rote ‘war on crime’-type campaign.

It turns out the identity Jim has stolen (borrowed) belongs to a man who has conned his wife and employer and faked his death, planning to skip town with his newly embezzled funds after lying low for a bit, in the local jail. The assistant’s assistant’s noticing results in the closing of the case for that particular faked death, and Jim is sitting pretty in an interrogation room, waiting. 

Mycroft takes a glance at the report and frowns. It seems like the type of puzzle his younger brother would so love, but the pointed way this not-a-shoplifter just tried to get the government’s attention was unmistakable.

So Mycroft takes a chance and makes the rare decision to visit this local jail in person.

He sets foot in the little interrogation (”interview”) room and takes pause. There is a youngish-man with close-cropped dark hair and dark, amused eyes that light up with something sinister as they turn to Mycroft. There are few men who do work in England who have enough power to waltz in and out of jail despite their mountainous piles of crimes and Mycroft mentally scans the list, parses it down to three, then gauges the man’s age and settles on an idea of the identity. 

The man confirms it for him as he takes a seat.

“Jim Moriarty,” he says, making an aborted effort to stick out his hand for a handshake, hampered by the handcuffs attached to the desk. The rattling prompts a peal of laughter and the man smacks his gum. “We should go out sometime.”

Mycroft thinks about it.

“Okay,” he says.

He’s met with silence, and rapid blinking. His standoffish personality precedes him then. Moriarty bites his lip and gives Mycroft a second once-over, serious this time.

Then he tilts his head, nods. 

“Thursday?” he asks. “Dinner.”

Mycroft pretends to think it over.

“I should be able to make time.”

That gets a self-satisfied grin out of the criminal. 

“I’ll text you the details then.”

(He has gotten himself arrested to force a meeting 12 times since.)

-

Mycroft learns very quickly that when he advances, Jim takes a step back. Jim is not used to not being the most audacious character in the room.

He initially uses it as a way to keep Jim at arms length; close enough to scrutinize but not so close he’s breathing down Mycroft’s neck. Metaphorically. 

But somewhere between the third or fourth date (meeting) he develops a soft spot for the clever troublemaker, who has style aplenty but can be discrete to the point of undetectable as well, if the situation (client, nature of the crime) calls for it. 

The fifth date (not a meeting) ends up with no exchange of intelligence whatsoever. By all accounts the sting should be rendered a failure on both sides, but both parties part ways with a light and, dare they think it, happy feeling.

-

Mycroft watches the barman as Jim scans then menu of the oyster bar, unwilling to let go of his strange ruse.

Mycroft sighs.

He props his elbows up on the table, and then bridges his fingers together.

Jim peers up at him from behind the faux leather-bound menu.

“I’ve, ehm, given it some thought, and maybe we should give this another shot,” Jim says. He means the quote-unquote  _relationship_. He says this like both of them don’t already  _know_  that in less than 14 days Jim will suggest they break up again. (The last time it was three weeks, and the intervals seem to be getting shorter with each round. The language, too, has changed. He doesn’t say they should stop cooperating, being on different sides of the law, or that they should stop meeting because it’s dangerous. He says things like “take a break,” and “serparation.”)

Mycroft sets his chin atop his fingers and gives him a wide-eyed, mockingly naive look. Jim takes pause.

“You know what I think?” Mycroft asks innocently.

“What?” 

“I think you’re just afraid to be happy,” Mycroft says. 


End file.
